iBreakfast

iBreakfast.com is the monthly gathering of Digital Media Executives, Entrepreneurs, Investors and Media.
We meet with industry Rock Stars, dine on Big Ideas and help Start-Ups raise Millions. In New York, New Jersey, DC, Boston and Los Angeles.

Thursday, July 2, 2015

MyLumper won
because they represented domain experts in an entirely fresh payment
processing field - truck loading. It offered a disruptive solution with
significant potential upside and minimal competition.

Cosign was
a very close second which monetizes visual interest through online
sales. While there is a potentially bigger market with greater viral
growth potential there are also likely to be more technologically
empowered competitors.

Augmented Reality this is a
fascinating but unproven area that requires high capital infusion to
test. If deliverable in an affordable package, could change ambiance
design for interior spaces everywhere.

SimplyCalled great solution for call centers withdisruptive potential for phone systems everywhere - with some fine tuning of offering.

This was a very tightly contested event with a high overall standard of pitches.

As a result, the finalists were very close and these are a list of special mentions.

BuyMyOrder’

DreamForwardVentures

FixIt

Linute

PageantRentals

Story2

Voom

Book + Free Workshop
Please
note that we have a book that explains the Investor process - what they
are really looking for, how they evaluate Entrepreneurs and how to make
yourself fundable - entitled Are You Fundable? (order at AreYouFundable­?)

Fundable Workshop.
From time to time, we run workshops on this process and help you shape
the essence of your pitch. We will be doing one again in July.

July Event on Thursday, July 30th at Edison Community.

If you want to work at Edison Community free for a week contact Karen White­

Saturday, June 6, 2015

I met a former employee who had gone on to succeed in the New Age
business. She credited her success to a lesson she once learned from me.

I called it the “Guru’s Shoe.” It explained how a cult leader was able to build his following and attract donations by identifying his true prospective believers.

It’s a lesson every entrepreneur should learn. Ditto: artists, writers and all salespeople.

The guru did this by having his devotees hold elaborate initiation ceremonies. At the end, the head initiator would say, "the Guru couldn’t make it today but if you would like to connect with his spirit you may kiss one of his sandals.”

Most people were reluctant to do this and just walked away. The few who did were whisked away to a special meeting where they we elevated to higher level of welcome and identified as true supporters of the Guru’s mission. At least, that was my understanding of the lesson - that, and the fact that having only to provide a left sandal probably meant they could be bought at less than half the price of a full pair.

However, it turns out that my one-time employee benefitted because she saw it completely differently.

“The power," she said, "is in the guru’s feet. That’s what the sandals are all about!”

That's she’s big in the New Age biz while I most assuredly am not - my cynicism was her catalyst to fame and fortune.

You take off when your beliefs match your marketplace - and you identify the people who get your story.

Monday, January 19, 2015

All
Startups will endure "the drought" - when customers are scarce and
investors non-existent.The more you can successfully bootstrap the
company, the more you impress potential Investors. If you want to know
how to endure “the drought” and find the money, think of the Bushmen or San of the Kalahari Desert. They get rain during one season of year, and conserve what they can with little technology - for the rest of the time, as desert insiders, they know how to find water through alternative sources.

What if you are a newcomer - a Startup in the desert? How would you find water?

You do this by what might be called "Salting the Monkey."

San drinking from a tuber

After they have run out of watering holes, wet sands and water stored in buried ostrich eggs, the San
extract moisture from tubers growing beneath the ground. It is about as
close as this desert comes to a water cooler but only a native could
find its sublimely subtle shoots and live off the moisture they have to
scrape from it. Anyone else would expire, which explains why desert
Insiders have an advantage.

How to “Salt the Monkey” to Find Money and Business

How would an Entrepreneur, stuck in this wilderness, tap the resources of the true insiders? Tribesmen
from surrounding areas who find themselves in this situation use other
animals like baboons to help them find these sources of water. They do
this by trapping the baboons or monkeys and feeding them salt so they
get thirsty enough to lead them to water.

All it requires is
finding a monkey hangout, an anthill, some seeds (a shiny object works
too), twine and the aforementioned salt. First, the visitor makes a hole
in the cement-like anthill at about crouching height. Next, the visitor
appears near the monkey and plays with his seeds, making sure to get
its attention. With great showmanship that ensures the monkey observes,
he places his hand in the amply sized hole and drops the seeds. Then he
walks away. The monkey, being a highly curious creature, will head for
the anthill once the tribesman has left the scene put his hand in and
grab the seeds. However, in making the fist, the monkey finds the hole
is not big enough to remove his hand bulging with the seeds. Since the
curiosity of monkey so consuming, he cannot let go of the seeds - and so
he is trapped. He feeds the monkey the salt and soon enough the thirsty
creature leads him to an underground lake.

Finding a champion
in the desert and inspiring them enough so they lead you to the
critical resource is they way every savvy Entrepreneur has launched
their Startup.

Saturday, January 17, 2015

As the long-awaited Are You Fundable? is about to be released, here are some excerpts.(This is not your typical Entrepreneur how-to book.)

How Startups can Survive the Drought and Find Investors

The more you can successfully bootstrap the company, and
progress through your own financing or machinations, the more you impress
Investors with your ability to deliver. So consider this a test you must pass –
whether you get funding or not. If you want to know how to endure “the drought”
and go on to find money, think of the Bushmen.
Now generally referred to as the San,
they live in the Kalahari Desert where there are no camels and few oases with
springs or even wells where they can pump water out of the ground. They get
rain during one season of year, and conserve what they can with little
technology beyond filling ostrich egg with water and burying them in the sand.

For
the rest of the time, they find water through alternative sources.

San drinking from a tuber

It
turns out that water can come from many places other than a faucet or a pump.
After they have run out of watering holes, wet sands and water stored in buried
ostrich eggs, the San extract
moisture from tubers growing beneath the ground. It is about as close as this desert
comes to a water cooler but only a native could find its sublimely subtle
shoots and live off the moisture they have to scrape from it. Anyone else would
expire, which explains why Insiders – especially the pedigreed variety – has an advantage.

To Find Money and Business: “Salt the
Monkey”

Since
a real Entrepreneur may require the same ability to survive what is
metaphorically a desert, how can they do it if they are an outsider or a
visitor to this terrain? While the San
have their proprietary ways of storing and finding these tubers, what would a
newcomer – a disruptor - do? One famous example is how visiting non-San tribesmen from surrounding areas use
other animals like baboons or monkeys in the desert to help them find these
sources of water. They do this by trapping the monkeys and feeding them salt so
they get thirsty enough to lead them to water.

How
they do this is quite astounding. It requires finding a monkey hangout, an
anthill, some seeds or any shiny object, twine and the aforementioned salt.
First, the visitordrills a hole in
the anthill at about crouching height. Anthills are built with a mixture of
sand and mucus and have the virtual strength of cement, so making the
fist-sized hole takes work. Next, the visitorappears near the monkey and plays with his seeds, making sure to
get its attention. With great showmanship that ensures the monkey observes, he
places his hand in the amply sized hole and drops the seeds. Then he walks
away. The monkey, being a highly curious creature, will head for the anthill
once the tribesman has left the scene put his hand in and grab the seeds. However,
in making the fist, the monkey finds the hole is not big enough to remove his hand
bulging with the seeds. Since the curiosity of monkey so consuming, he cannot
let go of the seeds - and so he is trapped.

If
all of this sounds eerily like the way you attracted your first customer, sponsor,
corporate champion or Investor, so be it. But there’s more - the monkey is yet
to do its real work. The patient visitor then walks up to the self-trapped
monkey, attaches the twine to its neck and shakes the seeds loose from his
hand, thereby freeing the monkey. He then ties the monkey to a tree and hands
him the salt. The monkey devours the salt and quickly develops a hellacious thirst.
At that point, the visitor undoes the leash and follows the parched monkey to
his stored water source, which is typically an underground pond or lake.

That
is how you survive the desert and “develop” a champion. With a little
imagination, you can see that launching a Startup may not be all that
different: you may have to find alternate sources of funding that can sustain
you and ways to salt the monkey – that is, getting other people to lead you to
the resources needed for sustenance. This is the kind of resourcefulness that
tells Investors you belong in the business. It separates the Entrepreneur who
will simply feast on the Investor’s money hoping for good fortune and the ones
who will use that money to get up and go build a business! http://bit.ly/1DNYIO4

Monday, January 12, 2015

If you drive in New York you will notice that cops are no longer harassing cars with tickets. Yet, the city is working is just as well as it did when they were out in full force. The same applies to the regular cops.

Maybe 20 – 30% of New York policing was really about “toll-collecting” from the public.

If that’s the case, maybe we are better served by technology. It is cheaper to run street parking with EZ Pass systems, The same with speeding and traffic lights.

Police turn their backs on image of Mayor DiBlasio

Any number of low-level crimes can be monitored by remote cameras and police sent as needed. This not exactly news, but instead of leveraging new tech, the city has been flooded with cops, who are largely put to work ticketing the citizens.

Maybe they have just proven we don’t need their presence until summoned. That is better served by harnessing the public through social media technologies like Waze and Twitter, which capture real time issues as they happen by direct messaging from the public, or indirectly by suspicious activity.